


Achromatopsia

by GG_Ladybug



Series: Fluff Fics (Because It Don’t Happen Often-) [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Antagonistic Soulmates, Because dead wife and all that, Color Blindness, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gabriel needs a break, Gen, Hawk Moth is Gabriel Agreste, Implied Relationships, One Shot, Platonic Soulmates, Possibly Unrequited Love, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Soulmates, Short One Shot, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, with a dash of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-23 01:54:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30048141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GG_Ladybug/pseuds/GG_Ladybug
Summary: Every person on Earth is born with achromatopsia. More simply put however, an extreme form of colour blindness that was inescapable. Black and white would be the permanent filter upon ones eyes unless a very specific moment was to take place changing such. Finding your soulmate. Either romantic, platonic or antagonistic.OrGabriel Agreste starts seeing colour three times in his life, and this is how
Relationships: Emilie Agreste & Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Emilie Agreste/Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth & Nathalie Sancoeur, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Series: Fluff Fics (Because It Don’t Happen Often-) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210478
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	Achromatopsia

Every person on Earth is born with achromatopsia. More simply put however, an extreme form of colour blindness that was inescapable. Black and white would be the permanent filter upon ones eyes unless a very specific moment was to take place changing such. Finding your soulmate.

It's been shown to be the case for centuries. For as long as recording has been possible, so has the idea of the achromatic life. Scientist, no matter the amount of money and effort put into the research, still can't find a sound reason for this happening. Some pegged it to evolution, others proposed it being an anomaly like hormonal changes.

No matter the person however, a lot of them gave some amount of credit to the homage of it being beyond their mortal control. Even the most atheist among them could agree it may not be possible without Devine intervention.

The exact process of seeing the colours varied from person to person. Some saw it straight away after laying eyes on their fated in a burst. Others had it come to them slowly like a wave, and there were even documented cases of colour not appearing for decades at a time.

Though the name for this was based solely on personal preference and culture, amongst large groups of western societies it was called The Moment. Each persons is different, just as the colour process is. Some have the fairy tale eye contact, and others may be the only one to see their soulmate and lose them immediately in a crowd. Though a depressing moment to have missed your chance, you could usually wait for them to run back into you at a later date. It was fully possible for one to have their Moment before the other.

Should this be in the context of only one locking eyes and receiving sight, many didn't bring this up to the person or at least did so with a grain of salt. The possibility of one being someone's soulmate but not vice versa was still a heated debate along with the soulmateless argument. It was usually best to just wait and see if they got sight later on.

The documentation did suggest such grisly scenarios as true, but it was fully possible there was some kind of birth defect that prevent the unlucky few from seeing colour or that the person in question who died of old age had the simple misfortune of their partner dying before they got the chance to meet them.

If it wasn't in fear of those, it was the fact there had been many cases of psychos lying with this farce. A looked down upon practice, but a practice made by the bold few none the less. Creepy men in bars, serial killers, manipulative 'we'll try anyways and the soulmate system can be dammed' partners trying to keep a chance, infatuated fans of celebrities claiming to have seen colour in an attempt to get close to them and cruel pranksters. That kind of thing.

There are three types of soulmates:

Platonic

Romantic

Antagonistic

You could even get bonds mixed up with each other too. Platonics could launch into a relationship only to realise they're into other people and romantics could be blind to their own love themselves for years until it occurred to them.

With this system, marriage and true love is by no means dictated by soulmates alone. Even platonic can end up in love with each other. A detectives whose greatest foe gave them colours could end up marrying a woman whose connected to their best friend they met in high school. The only one that ever ensured love was romantic. Even then, it could be a bumpy ride. Just because you were a soulmate didn't exclude you from the usual fights and rough patches.

In an almost exact opposite, the day your soulmate died is the day your world is plunged back into the noir lens of before. It happens immediately and without warning. The moment the other's brain function seizes, so does the surviving partner's colour.

He'd grown up in a rural area. Middle class farm life was his style for the first part of his life. His parents had always rattled on about the beauty of the county side, doing their best to describe exactly what they were seeing. He could never imagine it quite to the standard he was sure they were describing it as. There's only so much you can explain to a child about colours who had grown with nothing but greyscale.

_"Purple? It's a type of colour between hot and cool, red and blue. It gives a feeling as though it is between the heat of fire and the coldness of ice. Since angry is analogous to red and calm is analogous to blue, purple would be the person who appears calm, but you cannot tell that they are really angry. It gives off this mysterious feeling. It's not very common and quite unusual in nature. In music it would be a soft, but strong melody. A melody that takes you to another place, but does not have to be loud to do so. In terms of smell, it would be like smelling a passionate cologne that's more calm and cool than romantic. Purple's beautiful. It's my favourite colour. You can feel the wonder emit from it."_

He can no longer ask them when they die not long after he turns 9, but that explanation in particular sticks with him. Taking on urban living was quite the adjustment for him when he's accepted to an orphanage in the heart of Paris. Suddenly there were all these new shades of grey he'd never seen before after so long with greens and browns.

He wanted to know all of them. He wanted to wear every single one and make things. It was actually how he was introduced into the fashion industry. He'd never considered such a career path in the past, but he'd dabbled in tailoring with his mother from time to time when they had to fix his jeans. It wasn’t like he was completely out of depth.

Of course, announcing this came with his fair share of doubters. Being an 80's boy and having an obsession with fashion didn't exactly mix well in the first place when everyone else read hero comics or went to boxing lessons. Let alone with the added mockery of someone still achromatic even being able to start out.

He refused to give up and ignored every single one. Even if that meant plastering his wall with enough colour charts to make a library cry and researching just what went with others. He relied heavily on others in this way. A fact Audrey picked up on when he entered one of her competitions and got into the next stage where she watched him work before choosing who got the internship under her company.

"Your designs are fabulous. Magnificent even. But these colours. Some of them just don't work. It's horrifying even. Whoever told you red and green work together like that lied to you. To the point it should be a war crime. I understand you're yet to have your Moment?" She drawled while pacing back and forth through his studio and shuffling through a stack of his old ideas.

"Yes, ma'am. I've been turned down from other places because of it. I'm still colourless." He rushed out nervously. "And tell me why I shouldn't do the same? I'm sure I can find someone of equal talent actually capable of colour matching, no?" She questioned harshly. Turning the measuring tape in his hands as a way to think, he finally decided on what to say next in hopes he didn't screw up his one good chance.

"You can do that, maybe. But they won't be me. I'm funny. I'm smart. I have an eidetic memory. I'm a hard working, multi-lingual, multi-talented, insomniac who won't back down from a challenge to save his life, because he's ready to tackle the world colours he damned. When it comes down to living on sheer spite and will alone, I'm the best person you'll ever know. Hell and if the day comes I do get colours, then passing me will be the greatest faux pas you've made since shoulder pads because then I'll be unstoppable. The only thing that's holding me back is some stupid thing that you only get if you're lucky enough. I'm not going to give up because the world hates me and people say I can't. Okay?"

She stared at him for a moment past her sunglasses, and he held his breath. Wondering if he'd gone too far but she flashed a small rare smile instead. "Get out of this dismal grim studio. You're in." His tablet is preloaded with codes of colours he'd never explored before and she personally has people check over his work before he sends it in.

With enough practice and guidance, he can finally break off and mould his own company with the reputation and experience under his belt. The day he sees colour is at a gala. The mingling of big shots was something he was getting used to as he gained traction. "Gabriel! Meet Emilie Graham de Vanily! The woman who wore the clothes you made for the movie!"

He remembered that one well. It had been rather refreshing to be the expert for once in something. What better designer to turn to for a soulmate movie then a colourless man himself? He could capture the fact they didn't have a clue what colours they were wearing until the snap moment where they'd giggle over the awful combinations.

"Ah. Solitude. I remember that." He agreed, turning around from the drinks table before his eyes fuzzed for a passing moment. Then everything exploded. Or at least that's what it felt like as he dropped the glass of champagne he'd just poured. His surroundings had shifted into shades he'd never seen before. No. Not shades. Shades were all somewhere between white, grey or black. These were things he had never dreamed of. They were colours. 

He pressed a hand against his eyes and brought it away, waiting for them to leave, questioning silently if they were some hallucination from a drugged drink. Were these the colours? They were colours. Emilie was doing a similar double take. It was beautiful. He couldn’t of imagined such a thing. This was... everything, and it was her who'd done this. "I think we have some more acquainting to come. Don't you?" He greeted excitedly.

He isn't surprised the day the colours disappear again. He'd been mentally preparing himself for such a chance. He'd warned her again and again that the colours were weakening whenever she passed out. Like they did for partners of coma patients. Yet she didn't listen.

Every time she put on the broken miraculous felt like a death sentence. That didn't mean it hurt any less when he went from seeing emerald eyes to damning shades as she fell to the crypt ground. That ended up particularly hard to explain. He needs to put on a whole performance to preserve their secret identities. 

A frantic husband bursting out his office and searching tearfully around the house for his wife in the witness of his staff with shouts of the world going grey. Calling around frantically for answers and double checking every hospital and morgue as though it would be worth a damn and she wasn't being preserved below in hopes of some cure.

The world agrees she disappeared that day, because by all means and purposes she had. There had been no body or footage. Just poof. Nada. Everyone knows despite this that there's no hope of her simply reappearing. Not once Gabriel Agreste is confirmed to be colour blind.

It's hard to give up on colours again. Not after getting so used to them lighting up his works. It's like having part of his soul ripped out. It is having part his soul ripped out even. He didn't have the memory or experience like before. He wasn't 18 year old Gabriel: Master of spotting cauliflower blue amongst all the other shades. Suddenly he's back to square one. A toddler tapering around asking what colour grass looked like and being overwhelmed by the cities brand new array.

It's easier for him to stay in his office. Most the interior designing is black and white, so for just a moment, as long as he tries hard enough, he can pretend that everything's okay again. That he still had colour. He starts throwing together clothes in his wardrobe after the obligatory mourning period of wearing all black is over. He can no longer tell what is what. He thinks he's wearing a black and white combination.

According to what he's heard in passing, it's not, and they think he's being eccentric. He tries to fix his mishap a few times, but ends up giving in when he realised he could no longer distinguish red from what he wanted. The tabloids had suggested this would be the end of his career. Instead, he rebounded. Audrey sends him the colour chart program from back in his residency and he takes to imaging the colours in his head from what he remembers. He still sends them in for a colour check just in case.

Besides, he'd even started a monochrome line which was raging in popularity with the twenties and under since it was rare to find your soulmate before that age. More so with the film industry since no generation truly got over the Soulmate Trope. If you can’t enjoy the colours in fashion, then just enjoy the bases.

The next time he sees colour is only as Hawkmoth. Everything would plunge back into its usual grey after detransforming. After all, Hawkmoth wasn't technically him. It was a whole new half. So the antagonist bond that formed with the two heroes would be for him. Not Gabriel. It makes him remember why he loved the colour purple so much.

Nooroo doesn't question it, nor does he complain, whenever he just spends hours at a time sat in the lair staring at the world through fully capable eyes. Being infatuated with colours was much better then akumatising innocents to fulfil a promise to Emilie. He doesn't think the heroes have caught him marvelling at the sky before, but then again, they were probably kind enough to let him have a moment if they did. So he wouldn't know for sure unless it was brought up.

Hawkmoth is as much of a blessing as it is a curse. There are men who would kill for much less then the chance to see colour again after losing one of their fated. Granted, this colour is because you're battling it out with two teenagers who hate your guts, but it's colour none the less.

The next and final time he has a moment is waking up one day after a burning headache had him retiring early. It’s so god damn bright it’s making his eyes water. They aren't like the ones Emilie gave him. Hers had been a softer delicate shade. Whiter. Like the explanation for pastels he'd seen. And they certainly weren't from the antagonistic bond. Those were darker. More muted. These were vibrant. More vibrant then anything he’d ever seen.

But who...

Oh

_Oh_

**Author's Note:**

> Blame the Gabenath Book Club and Art Club for this one. Join us. I swear we don’t bite-
> 
> https://discord.gg/KGG8fGU


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